‘Just The Start’ Say Claimants And Disabled People As Blockade Brings Traffic Chaos To Central London

Islington Council have called the scheme Jobs on Prescription. This is an example from MHRN of what those prescriptions might look like.

Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters brought traffic chaos to Central London yesterday after blockading a major roundabout in protest at Iain Duncan Smith’s attempt to install Jobcentre funded busy-bodies in doctor’s surgeries.

Pic from @paulapeters2

Over 100 people gathered for the demonstration which began outside City Road Medical Centre, – one of six surgeries in Islington where so-called Work Coaches are due to be based. Iain Duncan Smith himself even made an appearance, dressed as a doctor and handing out work cures such as the prescription above. The protest was good-natured but determined and made a mockery of the health bureacrats who decided the surgery should be closed for the day due to fears over patients safety. In truth the people really concerned with the welfare of Islington’s poorest residents were out in the street defending them from the latest DWP attack on disabled people and those with health conditions.

After about hour the demonstrators moved off the pavement to march down the busy City Road chanting “We’ve gotta get rid of the rich” and “the NHS makes us well, the Tories make us sick”. On arriving at Old Street roundabout, a major central London junction, the growing police presence was out-witted and campaigners managed to block traffic moving in all directions. A banner was unfurled across the road stating that ‘Working isn’t working’ – a reference to the growing insistence from government that low paid insecure jobs are good for our health.

A large crowd of onlookers gathered with many supportive of the action taken to draw attention to the vicious regime being installed for those out of work due to sickness or disability. A new Health and Work Programme is planned which is likely to include some forms of forced medical treatment for some of those on sickness benefits. Already tens of thousands of sick and disabled people have had their benefits sanctioned for not meeting the endless petty requirement imposed by Jobcentres. Others have had benefits stripped away completely after being declared ‘fit for work’ at a Work Capability Assessment in spite of often serious and even life-threatening conditions.

Appallingly the Work Coaches to be stationed in GP Surgeries will come from the same shadowy private company that runs both these assessments and the local workfare scheme in Islington. The employment advisors, whilst largely funded by the DWP, will be employed by Remploy – once a provider of employment for disabled people until they were sold off by the government and turned into a welfare-to-work subsidiary of the hated Maximus corporation.

Claimants in Islington could therefore be found Fit For Work by Maximus, then forced to attend the Work Programme with Maximus and now even be coerced into being harassed by a Maximus Work Coach when they go to the fucking doctors. So claims from council leader Richard Watts, and other DWP apologists in the borough, that this scheme is officially ‘voluntary’ for participants really don’t count for shit. There have been no public assurances from either Maximus or the DWP that Jobcentres and Work Programme advisors will not force claimants to attend a GP-based work coach under the threat of benefit sanctions.

What is really going on is that this is a pilot scheme intended to provide evidence to justify the upcoming Health and Work Programme. But just in case the evidence doesn’t show what the DWP want campaigners have been informed that there will be no evaluation of the results of the scheme. It is little more than a formality in advance of some of the most brutal policies to be inflicted on disabled people that have been seen in generations. Lefty Islington Council may claim to have had good intentions when they agreed to the pilot, but in reality they have been mugged, by Maximus and the DWP. Now they know how claimants feel.

This is possibly the most destructive and devisive move so far in the persecution of the sick and disabled. Until now in the majority of cases disabled and sick people have been able to believe that their gp was on their side and able to provide support and understanding through processes which would test the strength of the well.
This policy seems designed to destroy the relationship of trust between gp and patient and I wonder what incentive ( I use the term loosely) is put before GPS to encourage them to remove the last place of safety from their often desperate patients.
Do you have any idea of what the qualifications of these coaches will be in relation to the health issues they will be dealing with and did the GPS in question have any opportunity to refuse participation in this scheme.

like all else this fucking government have started , it will be introduced as a pilot scheme and then delivered across the country without any analysis, good or bad, and infllictedd on the population because they can – there is nobody in britain going to stop this – WE ARE ON OUR OWN

If the people employed to work in gp’s surgeries are of an equivalent competence level to the people sitting behind desks in job center plus (dont laugh)
The will be barely competent clock watchers with zero interest.

So why are we enabling Liz & other greed apologists with public funds? Get her sign on without any prospects of a well paid job. That will do wonders for her research.

* Liz Sayce is the Chief Executive of RADAR, the UK’s leading pan-disability organisation. She is a Commissioner at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. From 2000 to 2007 she was Director, Policy and Communications, for the Disability Rights Commission, where she led on creating a new Disability Agenda for policy for the next two decades, covering skills, employment, housing, health, social care and more.
She also directed a formal investigation into physical health inequalities experienced by people with mental health problems and/or learning disabilities. Previously she was Director of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham Health Action Zone. She spent eight years as Policy Director of Mind, and one year as a Harkness Fellow in the United States, studying the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related policy initiatives.
She was a member of the UK Government’s Disability Rights Task Force (1997 to 1999). With personal experience and knowledge of mental health issues, she has published widely on mental health, disability and social inclusion, including From Psychiatric Patient to Citizen (Macmillan-Palgrave 2000).

Reblogged this on Christopher John Ball and commented:
It was a great day and a good turn out – many of the drivers were upset that we had blocked the road, but then that only gives them a little taste of the experiences we endure due to restricted access. This latest pernicious idea by the lamentable Iain Duncan Smith, supported it must not be forgotten by self styled disability champion David Cameron, will see more suffering and early deaths. Sartre said “Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.” that seems apt when discussing David Cameron’s Conservative government.

Atos, the controversial outsourcing company !!! The stupid government know that already before they contracted atos, so what do you expect more failures !!!! Same with Maximus new £280 Million contract with the DWP which is doubled in just 1 year on a 4 year contract. So £560 million a year instead of £280 million in 4 years. Total 4 year contract over £2 billion.

The failures are simple admin duties that the corporate companies are ripping off the DWP. That`s what corporate companies do with their contracts with government departments, easy targets to rip off.

The assessment was criticised by MPs and campaigners as inhumane. Thousands of vulnerable people were found to have been wrongly judged to be fit for work and ineligible for government support. Atos eventually stepped down from the contract a year early.

Geoff – I don’t blame you at all for thinking such things – the DWP, with their henchmen in tow have been absolute bastards to you – making you survive on just £33 per week – it is absolutely disgraceful.
The system stinks – all the way from Emma Brodrick’s WCA cock-up and fraudulent lies all the way up through.
Incidentally, before I forget, I wonder if it may be an idea for you to kindly put the ‘Crowdfunding’ post for David Clapson’s sister on this article as well. Good for her for doing it I am sure that most of us on here will wish her ever success in raising the £10000 required to get her solicitors to get to the truth about all of it. If everyone contributes a little or a lot, she will get to the total. She’s half way there already and there is still another 25 days to go!

You notice letters don`t exist – What The Law Says You Need To Live On.
Which is not £33. I have also noticed that the means tested run down of payments vary on each means tested claim, unlike before where it was a set rate of What The Law Says You Need To Live On.

I stopped going to a GP 20 years ago once I got a life long sick note. When they sent me a esa form to fill out last Sep I phone them up to say can you find my sick note which they [Maximus] said they will do. Knowing that they needs written permission because Serco control the DWPs data & needs to be freed from them. Of course I did not give them written permission. So until you find my life long sick note [making a mockery of the grey area] you can not act with threats for me not filling out the ESA bogus form. Result = Stale Mate. Why? Lots of reasons including litigation. The failure of recording my phone call because you will want to destroy the recording. So having my medical records from the GP by Atossers or Maximus will be out of date by 20 years but still have a life long sick note. The confusion brings utter admin chaos as well as asking for another ESA form because I spilt a cup of tea on the first one. Maximus I also want you to do something else for me as well – Can you give me the phone number of the DWP? Which they could not which proves Maximus run the ESA admin before you get the ESA bogus form. The DWP don`t do admin any more !!!!

People with mental health problems are still being wrongly assessed by a “severely flawed” system intended to find whether they are entitled to state help, according to a doctor who was charged with improving so-called “fit-for-work” tests.

The doctor, who did not want to be named, was employed by Maximus, the US company that took over the government’s controversial scheme to determine whether claimants are entitled to employment and support allowance in March 2015. He said that despite improvements to the system, some were still “falling through the net”.

The doctor, who now works in the NHS having left the company last year after more than a year as an assessor, alleged there were a series of problems at the heart of the scheme. These include unreasonable targets leading to poor quality assessments; not enough specialists in mental health; and tests that are too subjective and often skewed against the claimant.

As a result, the tests, which were introduced by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), were not fit for purpose, the doctor said.

Maximus is under severe pressure after a damning report by the National Audit Office in January found it performing worse than its much-criticised predecessor, Atos, in key areas. Auditors found that one in 10 of its reports on disability claimants were below standard, that the average cost of assessments has risen and the company is struggling to retain staff.

“You need people with psychiatric training. I worked in mental health for three years and I still struggled. If someone tells you they are severely depressed but there is no input from their GP and no psychiatrist, and no input from the mental health system, then the assessor is more likely to put down ‘fit for work’, because the assessor is basing their assessment more on the level of input they have rather than their clinical presentations,” the doctor said. He pointed out the majority of people who killed themselves who had mental health issues had not received a medical assessment.

Maximus said all staff had training in how to recognise how a person’s mental health impacted upon their ability to work. He said: “Our doctors, therapists and nurses are responsible for carrying out functional assessments, which are not clinical psychiatric assessments. While it is not our role to diagnose someone’s mental health, we know how important it is to understand it in the context of an individual’s functional capability.”

“”””“Our doctors, therapists and nurses are responsible for carrying out functional assessments, which are not clinical psychiatric assessments. While it is not our role to diagnose someone’s mental health, we know how important it is to understand it in the context of an individual’s functional capability.”””””

Hiding from us disabled is costing the DWP tens of Millions of £££. So it is us disabled wasting hundreds of millions of £££ by being disabled which we then are cured with one meeting at a WCA. In fact you are cured before you get to the WCA. now fit into the tick box called the Merlin Standards System.

The new Health and Work Programme is simply a ploy designed to force medical treatment for some of those on sickness benefits. Once people are forced to attend this programme they will be constantly bullied and harassed and then have their benefits removed.

Whilst I believe it is against the law to force medical treatment on somebody (other than in emergences or where some one is sectioned) it appears that anyone refusing treatment on this programme will be instantly sanctioned.

So basically anyone on the programme will have no rights, no choice and there will be no duty of care from the provider. At the end of the process there are going to be a lot of damaged people. Of course, this is typical of the Tories evil approach to the sick.

My hope is that there is a legal challenge in the courts to this horrible government inspired programme as it stinks to high heaven.

By signing these crappy false bogus forms that are actually agreeing with the terms & conditions of the Nudge Unit to sign. The threat of not excepting medical treatment is a contradiction so not worth the paperit`s written on.

So Disabled people are not fit for purpose DWP since it`s your responsibility to make those claims. Or is it Maximus are not fit for purpose !!!! Or even the DWP are not fit for purpose in their current state of failure.

The false claim of “medical treatment” WILL make your health worse so where does medical treatment come into believing there is nothing wrong with you. The mentality is bullshit & the real point is making threats legal through some nudge unit that overrides any REAL Medical Professional because you have sign up under threats.

It is getting more & more away from reality & into witch doctors & bible bashing.

Consent to treatment is the principle that a person must give their permission before they receive any type of medical treatment or examination. This must be done on the basis of a preliminary explanation by a clinician.

Consent is required from a patient regardless of the intervention – from a physical examination to organ donation.

The principle of consent is an important part of medical ethics and the international human rights law.

Is the consent given voluntarily?
10.
To be valid, consent must be given voluntarily and freely, without pressure or
undue influence
being exerted on the person either to accept or refuse treatment.
Such pressure can come from partners or family members, as well as health or care
practitioners. Practitioners should be alert to this possibility and where appropriate
should arrange to see the person on their own in order to establish that the decision is
truly their own.
11.
The test of capacity is set out in the Mental Capacity Act (see paragraph 2 above).
Once it
has been determined that a person has the capacity to make a particular
decision at a particular time, a further requirement (under the common law) for that
consent to be valid is that it must be given voluntarily and freely, without pressure
or undue influence being exerted upon them.

Geoff – Thanks for putting that up it explains it right there. Consent is a Human Right of choice not just for medical things. The Terms & Conditions in the small print of DWP rules on consenting to a form are not consent but threats.

Until recently, the United States and South Africa were the only industrialized nations not to provide universal healthcare to residents. Now the US stands alone. The right to medical care for all is set out in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by the US in 1948. The level of healthcare available for some people in the US has been compared to that in third world countries.

like all else this fucking government have started , it will be introduced as a pilot scheme and then delivered across the country without any analysis, good or bad, and infllictedd on the population because they can – there is nobody in britain going to stop this – WE ARE ON OUR OWN

Isn’t it strange that the AL JAZEERA news channel has gone walkabout in the UK just after it’s broadcast stopped in the good old US of A…………….

Could it be the more than honest reporting of the world wide refugee crisis that the government needs to block, or the open coverage that Donald Trump is given far more airtime than Bernie Saunders in the dirtiest network bias ever seen in America?

Or maybe that the Flint river poisonings of schoolkids was down to Fracking that our government is hell bent to conceal for fear of upsetting Osborne’s father in law whose wealth is much more prominent than the health of our people?

Foreign news channels give us a wealth of knowledge that the state biased BBC and Sky (zionist controlled), news links seek to contain.

An analysis of network television news coverage reveals what supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders have long suspected; the three broadcast television networks are intentionally ignoring the Sanders campaign.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has the revealing details:

So in terms of stand-alone campaign stories this year, it’s been 234 minutes for Trump, compared to 10 minutes for Sanders. And at ABC World News Tonight, it’s been 81 minutes for Trump and less than one minute for Sanders.

Bernie Sanders polls equal to or better than Donald Trump in every single poll, but the corporate owned network news divisions have given Trump nearly 30 times more airtime than Sanders. These same broadcast networks also spent nearly the same amount of time covering the bogus Republican email scandal as they did discussing Hillary Clinton’s campaign, so it’s not as if the networks are anti-Sanders and pro-Clinton.

You need to re-tune your receiver, GEOFF. Maybe it is a regional thing. Al Jazeera English HD, Al Jazeera Arabic and are both on Freeview; Al Jazeera English is also on the Astra Sateliite; and Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera Documentary and Al Jazeera Mubasher are on the Hotbird satellite. Al Jazeera English SD no longer exists on Freeview so it’s probably something to do with that. If you don’t have a HD receiver you won’t be able to receive Al Jazeera English anymore on Freeview.

Hey, GEOFF. If you are a commercial organisation you have to PAY for a slot on Freeview; it is called. free-VIEW. You also have to pay the satellite operator to carry your programming, pay Freesat if you want a mention in their EPG. Nothing for free in this life… 😉

In plain speak, when any claimant/s makes a DWP claim, for benefit
payment/s, of any type, Does the claimant/s give any/all power of
attorney, automatically, consented,or otherwise to the DWP.
And so there is no doubt on my question, If I walked in to DWP and
made a claim, say for unemployment/disability benefits, do I, as a
“sane” person hand over any/all Power of Attorney, to you, the DWP,
on making said claim.

You do when signing the ESA bogus form all power goes to Maximus that overrides the DWP & GP`s & every medical expert. Maximus control you because you have signed for that in the Terms & Conditions stated on the ESA scrap of paper.

Over 95% of disabled people condition has got worse since the threats & fake WCA`s. More like 99% !!! The GP`s are told not to give that information to the public domain because it is too shocking. Great health care to make everyone ill to prove everyone can work through illness. Disability is not a illness it`s a disability !!!

I won’t even go to the Doctors anymore, theyve let me down & fucked me over big style, fuck ’em. And I certainly won’t inform the DWP of my condition, what’s the point? Ive already been thru the sheer hell of unsuccesful psychotherapy & been told by a Doctor that I am untreatable. What are the DWP going to do with me? I’ll just suffer in silence, until they push me to breaking point that is, THEN they’ll fucking know about it.

Surely these DWP affiliated people can’t be installed in surgeries without permission from the practice? Why would any doctors allow this to happen? Surely what goes on at and who goes to see a doctor, for whatever reason, should be strictly private and kept separate from the DWP?

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